We need faith to have peace with God

 Reflection on the Word for the Trinity Sunday, on June 12, 2022
We need faith to have peace with God - Romans 5:1-5
Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand; and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God. And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us. ………………………………………………………………….

As we are approaching the summer solstice, in this week, we have also a full moon on our hands figuratively, and it is also called a Strawberry Super Moon, literally, in the Old Farmer`s Almanach. As a sky sensation it is expected to be on the rise over the South East horizon on next Tuesday.

The Moon will be seen significantly bigger than usual. The appearance of the Strawberry Full Moon largely corresponds with the month of June, as it is the season of the strawberry harvest in North America. In this year it comes with an other spectacle, the conjunction of the Earth’s five closest planetary neighbors, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn  will be aligned in a row and visible for the naked eyes about half an hour before sunrise.

Since prehistoric ages, nations measured time with the recurring seasons, marked by the orbit of the Moon, the movements of the Sun, the Zodiac etc, so the humans became aware of the periodical patterns of the earthly life, like day and night, months, seasons, years. Using different methods and different measures under the same Sun and the same Moon, in the same galaxy since time immemorial.

However, since Albert Einstein, it is also know, that time is relative, comparing to the speed of the objects. Time runs fast in an amusement park, but waiting for a train or a plain which is late for hours for whatever reason, it feels like a torture. Thus, somehow time is also a subject of our consciousness. Maybe it is more a mystery than exact science, but it is part of our reality, as it is a part of our minds.

A famous American novelist Washington Irving wrote a short story under the title of "Rip Van Winkle", where the rather antihero, henpecked villager got drunk in the forest of the Catskill Mountains, from the liquor of some dancing ghosts, who used to be the Dutch crew of Henry Hudson himself, on the board of the Dutch Ship, dubbed Half Moon.

This protagonist in this fiction fell asleep in the New York state forest right before the American Revolution and woke up 20 years later, having no idea that the American Revolution had ever happened. To his peers twenty years passed by, the British Empire retired to Canada, and Washington became president, but to him it was a twinkling of an eye he slept through.

This story was not new, of course, in the ancient world circulated many of them. In the Hebrew version, according to the Book of the Gemara, a sage, called Honi the Circle-maker, slept for 70 years, because throughout his whole life he was concerning the meaning of the Psalm verse, which says that, “When the Lord brought back the people from Babylon, we were like dreamers' (Psalms 126:1). Honi asked from his friends that “ Is it possible for seventy years to be like a dream? How could anyone sleep for seventy years?"

It happened that when Honi was journeying, he saw a man planting a carob tree on the road side. He asked, "When do you expect from this tree to bear carob-beans?"
The man answered: "It takes around seventy years." Honi was astonished: "Are you sure that you will live seventy years more from now?" The man answered: "I found carob trees in my garden, planted by my forefathers for me, so I too plant these for my children and for my grandchildren."

This story is not only an ancient version of the stories of the time traveling decade long sleep, as Honi sat down beside the carob tree and fell asleep for seventy years on the spot, but the story also give an insight to the very nature of faith itself. Righteous people keep doing good, even when the results of their deeds will be seen only by the future generations, even they will not live so long to see them.

Many people think that they do not need faith in these modern days, because science is the answer for everything. If we can take a look at the very history of science, we can see that how many times science had to acknowledge, besides its obvious achievements, that the very standpoint they stuck by swearing to the non-extant God that they are right, that very scientific standpoint was wrong, and they had to modify their very scientific definitions, occasionally once in a century, occasionally almost daily.

Actually, we need faith for everything. Let say, that I have to take a bus to travel to the city. I check the schedule, and the bus suppose to come to take the passengers from the bus stop at 1 PM. The bus is to come from an other city, and it is late. What should I  do? I have to keep waiting, having faith that the bus still will be arriving, if late, though I can not have a 100 percent certainty, that the bus will really come, eventually. The likeliness is way over 90 percent nowadays, but nothing can assure anyone that a bus schedule can be carved into marble, as we know that anything can happen anytime on the road, God forbid. Thus we need faith to wait for the bus, and also we need faith to get on the bus, hoping for the best.

Everybody knows the famous story, that when Sir Isaac Newton was thinking under the apple tree, an apple fell on his head, and he understood, that gravity exists. The Newtonian model of the Universe was born, and the scientists were happy to have the new understanding of the movements of the planets, and the general notions of the Newtonian physics. Of course today we know a bit more, but not enough.

We know that the old Newtonian physics is very limited, his understanding of the gravity is profoundly mistaken, and we do not know even today what is gravity, and how it works. But not only that. Practically, the whole scientific approach of researching, experimenting, getting results, finding patterns, are based on faith, they call it the science of statistics. Newton and others assumed, that if the apple fell once, then it will fall twice, or thrice. If the apple fell hundred times then it will fall always. However, this is just a statistical assumption. It is like with the bus, you can not really know, when the apocalypse hit, or someone or something overnight will change the standards of physics as we know it, and the apple will not fall, but fly.

In order to create a scientific theory, even the one which seems to work, you have to believe, you have to have faith that the apple will also fall at the thousandth or billions time. Scientific assumptions are based on patterns, which is statistics, which is eventually faith.

In our relationship with God, faith is essential. We aim Heaven. All our thought and actions must aim the reward in Heaven. We shall not expect rewards on here and now, the rewards will be given after this life journey.

We need faith and a faith filled vision to see Heaven always in order to embark the New Ark, the cross of Jesus, to get to Heaven, as Jesus said:
“ Don’t lay up treasures for yourselves on the earth, where moth and rust consume, and where thieves break through and steal; but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consume, and where thieves don’t break through and steal; for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” We need faith to take heart,
AMEN

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